Line of Defense Tactics is a real-time strategy game that provides the player access to four characters in a squad, giving access to various items and upgrades, like flash grenades, to assist them in eliminating the opposition. The interface is relatively easy to navigate at first, with scrolling occurring by clicking and dragging (or using WASD) and actions by your soldiers are handled by either click-and-dragging from the units to where you want them to move or attack, or by just clicking on the ground or enemy and choosing an action from a radial context menu. The average level will have players moving their units from cover point to cover point, attacking various enemy units that are between your force and the objective.
A real time strategy game somewhat lives and dies by its control scheme, and point and click, click and drag is really all you'll need in order to play, and complete, Line of Defense Tactics. Unfortunately, the controls are also incredibly clunky despite their simple appearance, much of it being due to not transitioning all that well from mobile implementation. There are various spots where the UI and radial menus could be a bit streamlined by utilizing the keyboard to higher degrees than it currently is implemented- at least giving a consistent keyboard shortcut to exit the radial menu, rather than requiring the player mouse over to close on the radial and select it, would be nice. If this feature is already in the game, then it's not in the Tutorial Videos or anywhere else on the UI therefore I don't feel bad for having missed it- it's the game's job to tell the player what the controls are, so it's best to leave trial-and-error to adventure games like Myst, not the controls of a strategy game.
A lot of information about how to actually take advantage of the controls isn't even shared with the players in-game, which is a grievous mistake as it's apparently caused a lot of confusion among, well, most of the people who have played the game. An example of this would be that most players think that they can only either select one unit or all of them, as that is all that's communicated to players by the tutorial videos and in-game tooltips, but something completely undisclosed to players in-game is that you can use the ctrl key plus the click-and-drag to select two or three of the characters, rather than having to select one or all units with no in between. Players can also utilize the 1, 2, 3 and 4 keys to select individuals or groups of your characters as well, but this, too, is never properly conveyed to the player in-game, which is likewise odd as it saves a significant amount of trouble in cramped areas early, which is from where a lot of the control frustrations stem. These keys/actions aren't even mentioned in the input tab of the Configuration menu and I had to go to the game's website in order to find a manual with the hotkeys, as one wasn't even installed with the game in its directory (which is a relatively common practice on Steam, but it can just as easily be included in-game for polish and a cohesive package).
Of course, beyond even that, there's still more to discuss on matters of the controls: They're horribly imprecise. This is meant literally, not ambiguously, as this inaccuracy in accepting inputs seems to stem from the nature of Line of Defense Tactics mobile heritage: Thumbs are not as precise as mouse pointers, so on a 4 or 5 inch screen, being a small amount off from selecting and directing a specific unit is fine. However, on a 23 inch monitor and a 1920x1080 resolution, I was driven mad a couple of times early on because while trying to navigate all four units among cover points down a cramped hallway, I would find myself clicking almost two inches away from a unit on the space I wished them all to move only for the game to select the character closest to that spot instead of opening the radial menu, as what should have happened since I was clearly clicking on open ground.
There's really no excuse for panning the camera being done by both WASD and click and drag, but punishing you should you choose to use the latter by causing you to occasionally and erroneously direct units to locations away from cover to get shot at by foes when you just wanted to pan the camera north a bit, and it makes it just insulting when your click was well over an inch away from the soldier and shouldn't have caused this scenario at all.
Speaking of, it does need to be noted that there are a couple video tutorials that players can access from the main menu of the game, but there's a couple of problems with how this is currently implemented. For example, clicking the Tutorial Video option doesn't begin showing you anything in-game, it actually just minimizes the game, opens your default browser and goes to Youtube (which, I am unsure if it's an issue with my machine but the music from the game's main menu doesn't cease when minimized, which is a bit of a problem since the Youtube videos are voiced). Something more integrated with the actual software would have been much more appreciated.
Putting the controls behind us for a time, we can now focus more on the mechanics featured in Line of Defense Tactics. Players will find that they are able to customize their units, from different primary and secondary weapons to things like choosing between additional, disparate gear such as grenades, med packs or stealth units to sneak past foes. Individual squadmates can level up while their gear can be improved from one weapon to another by spending the currency you collect in missions. These little persistent changes allow players to customize things a little bit to their liking, which is always a nice inclusion.
There are a grand total of 16 stages that you get the opportunity to shoot and explode your way through and a lot of the levels are pretty entertaining, especially those with space combat. The stages don't overstay their welcome, being just enough to sit down in between tasks during downtime, but this also leads to the game being pretty short if you just run through the levels without fully exploring them. Unfortunately, players are not able to replay levels until they complete the campaign (for some reason, I'd say to keep people from upgrading too much but the skirmish map gives you money to upgrade, so.... I can't actually think of a good reason), so if you like replaying a space combat level then you'll have to beat the game before being given the chance.
The graphics are extremely poor. The character models are obviously upscaled variants from mobile devices, but the complexity of the models and textures leave a lot to be desired. The environments are about the same quality as the character models as they are littered about with objects apparent to be geometric shapes with smudgy textured overlaid, such as barrels topped with obvious octagons.
To summarize the most pressing matter: Is the game fun? It can be and is throughout solid portions of the playthrough. Moving units from cover to cover, firing grenades or even tricking the AI into rushing towards you away from their cover can be extremely entertaining once you get the hang of what you have to click in order to achieve a specific result, no matter how archaic it may be. The largest issue would be: Is it worth purchasing Line of Defense Tactics over something like XCOM, which only costs $5 more, or Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II which is $5 less but older? No, not as it currently stands. There may very be improvements to Line of Defense Tactics- Tactical Advantage in the future, but right now there are just better games with more features, more replayability and, well, controls that aren't crazily unintuitive and force you to select units that are two inches away from where you clicked.
